FIFA suspends officials over vote scandal

British newspaper the Sunday Times alleged Adamu and Temarii offered to sell their votes for funding toward soccer projects and FIFA has announced that the pair will be barred from all football-related duty until the probe ends.

Four other FIFA officials - Slim Aloulou, Amadou Diakite, Ahongalu Fusimalohi
and Ismael Bhamjee - have also been provisionally suspended from taking part in
any football-related activity.

The ethics committee will meet again in mid-November to take a final decision
ahead of the World Cup vote on December 2.

FIFA ethics committee chairman Claudio Sulser said: "The decision to
provisionally suspend these officials is fully justified and should not be put
in question.

"The evidence that has been presented to us today has led us to take this
provisional measure, as we considered that the conditions were definitely met to
take this decision and we deem that it is crucial to protect the integrity of
the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cup bidding process.

"We are determined to have zero tolerance for any breach of the code of
ethics.''

FIFA president Sepp Blatter insisted that the world governing body is not
corrupt but said there were "devils'' within football as in society.

Blatter told a news conference in Zurich: "It is a sad day for football
because it's a sad day in life and you cannot have always sunny days.

"Our society is full of devils and these devils you find them in football. We
have to fight for fair play, we have to fight for respect and especially we have
to fight that the people in charge of FIFA behave as they should do and if this
is not the case then we have to intervene.

"As the president of FIFA I appeal to and I expect all members not only of the
FIFA executive committee but all members of the FIFA family to behave in an
honest, sincere and respectful manner because football is based on discipline,
respect, fair play and solidarity.

"These rules have to be abided by everybody in the football family. We have the necessary tools to intervene when necessary and that is what we
have done today.

"I was a little bit surprised that you say is FIFA corrupt? Ladies and
gentleman FIFA is actually in the world of sport a well recognised organisation
and institution and if there are some activities that are against the ethics and
the morals that's why the ethics committee came in.

"So let us do our job and clarify the situation and bring back credibility to
football, and we do it now, we try to do it but you can never avoid in a game
that have more than one billion fans that everybody behaves like we would like.